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From: Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
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Subject: Re: Help with regexp
Date: Wed, 02 Dec 2009 22:48:40 -0500
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>> > Hi,
>> >
>> > I am trying to find the regexp that could match on these:
>> >
>> > "=>foo"

> [...]

>> "=>\\([^:]*\\(\\|:[^:]*\\(\\|:[^:]*\\)\\)\\)"

> Wow, Pascal. You have taught this old dog a new trick. Up to now, I
> hadn't thought of putting an alternative (i.e. "|") at the start of a
> parenthesized sub-expression. Thanks :-)

An equivalent way is to use ? (or ?? if you care about the order in
which it's matched):

  "=>\\([^:]*\\(:[^:]*\\(:[^:]*\\)?\\)?\\)"


        Stefan